'City Lights To Dark Skies' is my contribution to this years International Dark Sky Week, which runs from the 20 – 26 April 2014. I spend a lot of time photographing the night sky and have seen many of the negative effects that light pollution can have. So I thought one of the best ways to educate people about light pollution would be to show them the difference between a light polluted city sky and a dark sky with little or no light pollution. I used time-lapse photography to demonstrate this, and spent many hours in different lighting conditions capturing the footage.

The footage was shot around the Wellington and Wairarapa region on the North Island of New Zealand. We are very lucky here, as the light pollution around Wellington itself is no where near as bad as it is in larger cities such as New York, London or Sydney. Wellington is surrounded by hills, so a lot of the light pollution is contained within, and you can travel just 20 minutes out of the city center to find skies dark enough to view the Milky Way with the naked eye. I also traveled to locations with varying degrees of dark skies. From locations with moderate light pollution to the darkest of skies miles from anywhere in the Wairarapa – it was an interesting exercise to see what is visible in the night sky as you go from place to place.

During my time as an astrophotographer, I have spoken to many people from around the world who have been interested in my photographs and videos. I was truly shocked when some of them said to me that they have never seen the Milky Way with their own eyes before. I did some further research into this and found that more than one fifth of the world population, two thirds of the US population and one half of the European Union population have already lost naked eye visibility of the Milky Way! This is a real shame, and the knock on effects of light pollution can be a lot more serious than just not being able to see the stars at night.

Finally, I urge you to go check out the International Dark Sky Association. You can access their website at http://www.darksky.org and also the International Dark Sky Week webpage at http://www.darksky.org/resources/109-international-dark-sky-week Here they have a lot of information on the effects of light pollution, and what can be done in your community to combat it. And during International Dark Sky Week, do yourself a favor and head out of the cities for some star gazing. It can be a truly humbling experience, especially if you haven't done it before. It's certainly a release for me from every day life…after all, life without dark skies – you don't know what you are missing…

————————————————————————————————————————————————————————- The music, Nocturne 1985, by Rhian Sheehan was used with permission. You can check out Rhian's latest album, "Stories from Elsewhere" and more of his amazing music here: http://rhiansheehan.com

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This was filmed between 29th April and 10th May 2011 in the Arctic, on the archipelago Lofoten in Norway.

My favorite natural phenomenon is one I do not even know the name of, even after talking to meteorologists and astrophysicists I am none the wiser.What I am talking about I have decided to call The Arctic Light and it is a natural phenomenon occurring 2-4 weeks before you can see the Midnight Sun.

The Sunset and Sunrise are connected in one magnificent show of color and light lasting from 8 to 12 hours. The sun is barely going below the horizon before coming up again. This is the most colorful light that I know, and the main reason I have been going up there for the last 4 years, at the exact same time of year, to photograph. Based on previous experience, I knew this was going to be a very difficult trip. Having lost a couple of cameras and some other equipment up there before, it was crucial to bring an extra set of everything. I also made sure I had plenty of time in case something went wrong. If you can imagine roping down mountain cliffs, or jumping around on slippery rocks covered in seaweed with 2 tripods, a rail, a controller, camera, lenses, filters and rigging for 4-5 hour long sequences at a time, and then having to calculate the rise and fall of the tides in order to capture the essence – it all proved bit of a challenge.

And almost as if planned, the trip would turn out to become very difficult indeed. I had numerous setbacks including: airline lost my luggage, struggling to swim ashore after falling into the Arctic sea: twice, breaking lenses, filters, tripod, computer, losing the whole dolly rig and controller into the sea, and even falling off a rather tall rock and ending up in the hospital. As much as I wanted to give up, the best way Out is always “Through”. I am glad I stuck it through though because there were some amazing sunrises waiting. At 1:06 you see a single scene from day to night to day which is from 9pm to 7am. Think about that for a minute.. 10 hours with light like that.

I asked the very talented Marika Takeuchi to specifically compose and perform a song for this movie, and what she came up with is absolutely remarkable. Thank you very much Marika!

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This was filmed between 4th and 11th April 2011. I had the pleasure of visiting El Teide. Spain´s highest mountain @(3718m) is one of the best places in the world to photograph the stars and is also the location of Teide Observatories, considered to be one of the world´s best observatories.

The goal was to capture the beautiful Milky Way galaxy along with one of the most amazing mountains I know El Teide. I have to say this was one of the most exhausting trips I have done. There was a lot of hiking at high altitudes and probably less than 10 hours of sleep in total for the whole week. Having been here 10-11 times before I had a long list of must-see locations I wanted to capture for this movie, but I am still not 100% used to carrying around so much gear required for time-lapse movies.

A large sandstorm hit the Sahara Desert on the 9th April (http://bit.ly/g3tsDW) and at approx 3am in the night the sandstorm hit me, making it nearly impossible to see the sky with my own eyes.

Interestingly enough my camera was set for a 5 hour sequence of the milky way during this time and I was sure my whole scene was ruined. To my surprise, my camera had managed to capture the sandstorm which was backlit by Grand Canary Island making it look like golden clouds. The Milky Way was shining through the clouds, making the stars sparkle in an interesting way. So if you ever wondered how the Milky Way would look through a Sahara sandstorm, look at 00:32.